Mercedes' Nico Rosberg is hoping his pole position at the Bahrain Grand Prix will "kickstart" his 2013 season after a disappointing first few rounds.

Rosberg took pole by over 0.2s from Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, who said the Mercedes was "unbeatable" in Q3. After two retirements with technical problems in the first three rounds, Rosberg is looking forward to a good race to put his season back on track.

"I really want to kickstart my season now after three tough races and today was the first normal qualifying up to now," he said. "I'm okay for the race tomorrow but for sure the competition is going to be tough. It's difficult to say if we have enough pace to win tomorrow, but for sure we are going to try and I look forward to starting first."

He said Mercedes improved his car's performance overnight but that the pole position was still a bit of a surprise.

"It wasn't really clear before qualifying who had the quickest car over one lap," he said. "I was a bit closer this morning already, so I was happier than yesterday, which shows that as a team we worked really well overnight because yesterday we were really struggling. So that's been going well and it's a fantastic result. Tomorrow is going to be a tough race with rear tyre degradation especially so a lot can still happen."